‘Walking Dead’ Season 8 Premiere Will Explain ‘Old Man Rick’ Scene

Any fan of The Walking Dead knew changes were coming with the war against Negan, though the Season 8 trailer seemingly spoiled a major twist ahead. Or perhaps not, as Robert Kirkman teases Season 8’s October premiere will introduce us to the older Rick glimpsed in the footage.

You’re warned of full Walking Dead spoilers from here on out, but where the Season 8 trailer teased only a bearded, grey and close-cropped Rick with a cane, comic readers likely recognized the new look as the result of a post-war time-jump. Producers previously hedged on Season 8 implementing the leap forward, though it’s also plausible the scene in question is merely a flash-forward, or dream sequence.

We may not wait long to find out, as Kirkman apparently told Entertainment Weekly “I’m pretty sure you’ll learn in the first episode what that means.” That said, he wouldn’t explicitly confirm if we’d be staying with the older Rick:

That is an intriguing tidbit that we did throw out there on purpose, and we’re hoping that people continue to question how it is that fits into the story line and what it is. Comic book fans know where a scene that kind of looked like that would fall, but it also doesn’t seem like we would be getting to that just yet if you were a comic book fan, so there’s a mystery to that.